Tag Archives: United Airlines

Starbucks: The Adults In the Business World

18 Wednesday Apr 2018

Posted by in All Rights Reserved, Branding, Business, Communication, Crisis Management, Customer Relations, Customer Service, Discrimination, Employee Retention, Ethics, Honor, Human Resources, labor, Lessons of Life, Life, Management Practices, Nevada, Public Image, Public Relations, racism, Respect, Social Media Relations

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , , , , ,

When you have with 238,000 employees, most of whom interact with the public all day, someone is going to do something stupid. That is a fact of human nature. The question is, how the leadership of a company deals with an incident? In the case of Starbucks, you be the adult and not the five-year-old.

Racists Don’t Think They’re Racist

Racism is a major problem in this country. Racists usually don’t know they are a racist. In their minds, they do what they think is ‘natural’ from their cultural perspective. What is natural is what is correct. This means most racists are in the bigot closet and don’t even know it.

There is no racism test for an employer to give a job applicant. If there were, a lot of people would be unemployable. Closet racists are going to be hired at all major corporations. Sometimes, like at Cracker Barrel, the racism is condoned by the employer; however, most companies avoid hiring overtly racists employees. At least that’s what they claim.

Regardless, when an employee does something that is racist, many executives will attempt to minimize the incident, or attempt to deny the issue was about race. The public relations (PR) people are experts at diluting the obvious by reminding the media that motivations can’t be proven. From a PR perspective, a company, like United Airlines, can do no wrong, even when it does something wrong.

Starbucks Policy of Responsibility

The leadership at Starbucks is probably not perfect, but at least they make every attempt to be aware of what is correct from what is wrong. That is why Kevin Johnson, the CEO of Starbucks wasted no time in responding to one of his employees calling the police on two African Americans for trespassing in a Starbucks when they didn’t purchase something in the store.

In this incident is noteworthy that at least six officers were present to arrest two non-combative African American males. It was overkill that the police were called, and overkill that six police responded. If a white man had robbed the Starbucks it is likely that it wouldn’t have had this response.

The victims of this incident were held for over eight hours after being arrested. They were released after the police admitted they had no crime to with which to charge them.

What Starbucks Didn’t Do

Johnson didn’t offer excuses for his company. He didn’t say the video doesn’t really tell the whole story. The CEO didn’t even hint that it might not have been a racist act.

Instead, Johnson offered apology after apology.  Johnson met directly with the men involved. He called the act “reprehensible.” It is unclear what happened to the employee in question, but the employee is no longer at that store.

Most companies today look like children trying to cover up their misbehavior after a public relations incident such as this one. It is good to know that Starbucks is capable of using common sense and decency in responding to this situation.

Sadly, the rest of the employees at Starbucks will be impacted by this one person’s act. We all pay for the bad behavior of others.

PR Fail: What United Airlines Should Have Done

28 Tuesday Mar 2017

Posted by in Aging, Branding, Business, Communication, Crisis Management, Customer Relations, Customer Service, Employee Retention, Ethics, Generational, Honor, Human Resources, Internet, Management Practices, parenting, Politics, Pride, Public Image, Public Relations, Respect, Social Interactive Media (SIM), Social Media Relations, Travel, Women

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

United PR:  At least we don’t shove the children out at 35,000 feet!

Sunday morning United Airlines once again proved that they have some of the worst public relations people in the business, which is likely a reflection of their top management.

The Situation
Two young girls, ages estimated to be around ten to eleven years old, were prevented boarding a United Airlines flight from Denver to Minneapolis with their family. These were children, not adults, nor young adults. According to United Airlines, they were flying on what is known in the industry as a “Buddy Pass,” which is a relatively free (taxes have to be paid) ticket that is one of the benefits of airline employees.

The girls were wearing leggings, which again, according to United Airlines, is in violation of the dress code of people flying on a Buddy Pass. The gate agent apparently approached the family and told them the girls could not board the plane wearing leggings.

It is important to note that two of the girls did not have any other clothing options at the gate, and the family apparently checked bags with the girl’s clothing in them at the main ticketing, where a United representative had to weigh the bags, check the tickets, and confirm the identifications of each of the passengers. Despite this close contact with the passengers, the ticket agent did NOT prevent the children, nor the rest of the family from heading to the gate.

The gate agent that confronted the family was involved in a “tense” discussion of the dress code issue in front of other passengers. At one point the gate agent bragged, “I don’t make the rules, I just enforce them.”

This became a major public relations issue because passengers in the area were witness to the scene and a passenger from another gate investigated the situation and reported it on Twitter. The gate agent’s handling of the situation was overt enough to cause another family, not involved in the incident, to have their daughter put on a dress over her leggings.

United later reported that the girls later changed and boarded another flight.

What United Should Have Done
It boggles the mind as to the many public relation fails occurred by United staff, but here is what the public relations people should have said and done:

On Sunday, March 26, a family was boarding one of our flights on a special ticket that includes a dress code requirement for the passenger. One of our gate agents determined that the children were not dressed according to that policy, and the family was not allowed to board the flight.

While the gate agent technically followed our policy, we regret that this situation became a public scene. We also regret that our staff did not remind the family of that policy when they checked their bags at the main ticket counter, when the children would have been able to obtain appropriate clothing before their bags were checked.

Our policy is meant to encourage a professional appearance of those passengers who are flying as a benefit of being employed, or being a family member of one of our employees. When this involves children, we attempt to be sensitive to the difference in the typical appropriate dress for their age.

We regret to the manner in how this situation was handled and apologize to the family involved and to the passengers who were witness to this situation at the gate. We are reviewing our policies and how those policies are enforced.

The United Blood Bath
Rather than apologizing, United decided that it would work to sway public opinion against the traveling family and humiliate them further. Their announcement in response to the situation put all the blame on the children and their family and implied that the gate agent who created the scene was the hero.

It is a Trump-like strategy that is based on never admitting failure, even when the failure is obvious. It did produce a wave of approval by people who enjoy watching someone being crushed by a more powerful and insensitive force.

However, this type of strategy builds mistrust of an organization and clearly demonstrates United’s lack of empathy for its passengers, paying or not. It also demonstrates the lack of humanity by a corporation that doesn’t understand the deferred cost of bad public relations, and proves that United doesn’t know the quality of mercy.

5 Reasons Why Ignoring Negative Social Media is a Career Ender for a VP of Customer Service

01 Tuesday Nov 2011

Posted by in Business, Communication, Customer Relations, Customer Service, Public Relations, Social Interactive Media (SIM), Social Media Relations

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

, , , , , ,

USA PDT [Twitter: ] [Facebook] [LinkedIn] [Skype: 775.624.5679]

Paul Kiser

Despite the overwhelming evidence of the impact of Social Media on the perceived public image of a business, many Customer Service (CS) and Public Relations (PR) executives still handle negative Social Media (blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Yelp, etc.) by ignoring the bad publicity. One can only marvel at the rationale of an executive team in the 21st century, which believes that avoidance behavior of PR problems in the Social Media environment is the best policy.

I would suggest that there are four reasons for this philosophy, which are as follows:

Bad Social Media PR is Bad for Business

  • An outmoded understanding and/or denial of Social Media and its long-term impact on the company’s public image.
  • A belief that negative statements in the Social Media have no cumulative effect and that they will disappear over time.
  • An arrogance by the executives of a corporation that they control their public image by what they say and do and by the money they spend on advertising, not by what individuals outside the company say about them.
  • A belief that by giving attention to someone with a complaint about their company will cause more problems and possibly force the company to admit to their stupidity.
There are five reasons why ignoring negative Social Media is a bad idea and why the CS and PR executives who follow this policy have an expiration date on their careers:
  1. A negative Social Media comment is forever. It doesn’t fade and it doesn’t go away.
  2. A negative blog can and will be found by any Google search of your company. Why would a CS or PR executive let people who search for their company be exposed to everything said by the people who hate you?
  3. Bad comments on Social Media are cumulative. When someone is mad at your company they will search to find other people who feel the same way, and then you have a movement of people who are united against your company.
  4. Waiting to address bad publicity only makes a company look like they are hiding something when they finally do publicly address the issue, which is a lose, lose, loser in damage control.
  5. Once a company wakes up and realizes that ignoring bad PR is a stupid idea, how long will the implementor of that policy have before the company seeks someone who is smarter about handling negative Social Media?

A negative Social Media comment about a company is an opportunity. Everyone knows that major corporations are monitoring the Social Media, so when someone makes a negative comment they know that someone in the company is reading it. A company that contacts the author of the complaint to show concern will, at the very least, prove that the company appreciates its customers. By, 1) addressing the reason for the complaint and, 2) making some tangible effort to offer a reward to the person for bringing the issue to the company’s attention, the complainer will likely become a positive voice for the company’s public image and may even delete the negative blog or comment.

Companies, and their executives, who fail to address negative Social Media comments are risking their future. Netflix and United Airlines are just two examples of corporations that have done too little too late to address public image issues in the Social Media and they are paying the price. How many companies have to become a joke to their customers, investors, and the public before they realize the mistake they are making by ignoring Social Media?